KER-PLOP

Ted Reynolds

I.

"I am your examiner," said the little man on the far side of the bare desk.

Checker Pilot Cotter Oren would have risen to attention, but it was null-grav, he was strapped into his chair, and he was far too weary anyway. He contented himself with a deferential nod. All he knew of the other was that he was Oren's superior, and that it was better to answer his questions as accurately as possible. He only hoped he wouldn't fall asleep in the middle of the interrogation.

The examiner looked up; he was gaunt for a Randarian, unstriking except for his eyes, which showed at once both piercing and wistful.

"Item," he said abruptly: "you have made a most unusual and difficult journey, for which you will eventually receive full recognition and congratulations, but there is no time for that now. We must evaluate the implications of what you have experienced without loss of time.

"Item: don't worry about the relative significance of details. Tell me everything you can come up with. It will be my responsibility to integrate and analyze the data for possible policy decisions, not yours.

"Item: I will not be able to prompt you in any way. Your observations must not be contaminated by what I may think I already know; I want Primary experience.

"Item: you are under hypnosis. Among the other reasons, this is keeping you from succumbing to what would otherwise be intolerable exhaustion.

"Now you may begin. At the beginning, please."

There was a long pause, while Oren's gaze roamed the small anonymous room and finally settled upon the examiner.

“I'm sorry, sir," he said at last, "but I haven't the slightest idea what it is I'm supposed to have done."

The examiner flashed a warm smile in which all consciousness of rank dissolved. "Of course not," he said. "That's part of the hypnosis. Your more recent memories would tend to adulterate the earlier. Don't fight the hypnosis; it will do the job for you."

"If you say so," said Oren, "I'll try." He leaned back and closed his eyes. Slowly, like dust at a planetary genesis, a few particles of memory began to collide and cohere. Abruptly they coalesced; his waking view of his luxury suite on Randar 13 sprang into his vision as solid as it had been ... how long ago?

"I woke up," he began tentatively, "twenty minutes before the start of my trick. I think maybe I get more and more nervous in my sleep as my watch gets closer, till my nervousness wakes me up automatically on time. Anyway, twenty-to is when I always wake up. Breakfast was ready for me." He paused. "Seems whole orbits since I've had Groogeggs and flaben. Got dressed . . . these clothes ... in better shape then, of course. Stopped at the Comm-Recept on the stairs to the roof. I'd sent another video in to Randar Central on 4B before I slept. Told them most respectfully that they had to find another checker-pilot at once, or the whole station would collapse under the incoming pile-up. Since Roscalp broke down, me and Hernie and the kid had been working overlapping five-hour shifts, wearing ourselves out, and the ships coming in faster than we could get to them. Suppose one of us went under too. We just couldn't keep it up much longer. And so on, real polite. I knew there couldn't be an answer yet. It takes eight hours for light to get in to Randar 4 and back; even if they kicked back their 'Sorry, old fellow' right away, it would be another half hour before it got back to 13. But I keep hoping the Board or someone will do something someday about speeding light up a little bit."

Oren stopped abruptly, realizing that he was merely repeating almost verbatim his not very brilliant thoughts of that earlier time. "You wouldn't have any pull in a matter like that?" he asked.

"I'm afraid not," came the other's voice. "My influence over the physical laws of nature is almost as insignificant as my influence over the Board."

Oren chuckled, and plunged into his own mind again.

"So, there wasn't an answer yet. I hurried to my checker-ship, which is always ready on the roof, and if anyone but me ever tries to use it... zzzzutt." He languidly slit his throat with his index finger. "First I had to squeeze into my checker-suit, to make me a superman, and after that into my checker-ship, to make me a god. Those checkers are blamed small, you know. Don't feel like getting into a ship, more like climbing into a second oversize suit. I guess it's really not a ship at all; just an outer defense suit, 'bout three meters long. But Cosmos, friend, does it take you places! Well, I punched the key to lift me to my assigned starting point on automatic, and in a couple of seconds I was ready for duty, a few hundred kiloms off Randar 13. Top half of my view was stars, real nice; lower half viewscreen. Got to handle the controls by touch, of course. Can't possibly see them."

And now, his surroundings forgotten in the grip of the hypnosis, Cotter Oren again effectively lived his memories.

II.

So below all those beautiful stars flicked on the noticeably-less-beautiful face of Flyn Rose, my Controller. Like all his breed, he's a jerk—gets such a kick out of sending guys places no one's asking them to go themselves.

Rose looked up from his control board down on Randar 13, and winked at me. Then he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, so no one could hear but the half-dozen stations that constantly monitor our contact. "How about taking a few minutes for a leaf, old boy? I'm feeling real mellow today."

I didn't feel like kidding. "Come off it, Flyn. What's come in already?"

"Kinda impatient to get to work up there, Cot?" And Rose, ignoring his own viewscreen, leaned back in his swivel chair to gaze upward. "I can see you through the skylight, you know. One of the fainter and less aesthetic stars of my zenith. Yet within that orb there breathes a spirit so dedicated to his task of welcoming the galaxy's wanderers to Randar... no, I simply cannot grasp it. Inside, you must be as work-shy, and planet-hungry, as the rest of us. Come down from yonder heights, oh rover ..."

Cosmos, he'd go on like that forever if I let him. "When they bust me to gravity—like one Controller I could name—and not until. I draw ten times your pay, Flyn, and you know it."

"Sadly true. Then your munificence will rinse our impoverished gullet this coming pre-sleep, right?"

"If you don't know, ask someone intelligent... is there anything in?"

Rose didn't need his clip-board. "Oh, things are a tiny bit piled up, is all. Let's see, now." As he recited, views, ports, distances, transit times, tonnages, population estimates, ship layouts paraded across the screens behind him. "An S.N. Cruiser waiting at Coordinate 1, from some star called Mike's Hangover, for the love of Man; 740 light years off and 753 years en route. Some two-man yacht in Coordinate 4, from Irango, 17 light years, of course. A hulk from off in the Spider Web somewheres, 3000 light years; but the way she's pitted, I doubt me much of any survivors. That's in Coord 11. None of them have signalled us except with the automatic come-out identification signals, so you'll just have to enter blind; as always. Wait, another just came in—Coord 9. And here comes the identification... AND it's from 350 light years, Pellidee." His snub nose wrinkled. "Cosmos, who named these places?"

Less I couldn't have cared. "A little piled up, the man says. Who's wasting time spewing vacuum when we're four ships behind?"

Rose looked up sharply. "Cotter, what are you doing twiddling your heels up there? You're on the job, man. On that Irango yacht on the double. Coord 4—jump, checker!"

I jumped. Jumping, I swore. I knew Flyn was doing his job well; the adrenalin he pumped into me during the seemingly wasted first few minutes would keep me working at double speed the rest of the watch. But, holy nova, someday I'll twist his neck for good!

My conscious throttling of Flyn Rose did not prevent my hand from automatically punching the button for off-Coordinate 4. The checker-ship did the rest. The heavily packed stars slewed around me in a vast circle, and for a fraction of a second the ship's nose hung in a steady point just over Randar 13's darkly cutting horizon. Then everything outside flickered like a child's shifting splinter-crystal, and I was a third of a second and a hundred thousand kilometers straight ahead of myself, hovering at one of the 24 prearranged work locations—Coordinate 4. Or, more exactly, off-Coordinate 4, because if I were so dumb as to aim for the Coord itself, I'd find myself amalgamating at light-speed with the yacht that was already there. No, and I thank you.

I rotated the checker-ship until I could catch sight of the yacht, stabilized where the detractor beams had braked it from light to local zero in zero squared. The occupants, if any there were, hadn't jumped on their chance to communicate with the outside for the first time in seventeen years. I behooved myself to caution. A checker-pilot can get so involved with the complications of the multi-generation flights that he starts to forget that even a single-generation one can generate some oddities. There was that lunatic from Grome just 2 light years away—you can't find a shorter hop than that—who took a laser to me on the impression that I had turned the stars out on him.

Why anyone would want to spend two or seventeen years, or a whole life, in one of those insulated flasks is sure beyond me; the way I see it, if you're born in a stellar system, you better accept being stuck with that one. What in Cosmos is the use of spending half your life in isolation to get to one of the few near systems you might reach in person, when you're an old man, and there's likely nothing any better there than what you left behind? And what in a cubed Cosmos is the sense of voluntarily accepting life confinement on a real trip, in a sealed capsule you'll die in, so your umptieth descendants can land on a planet for which they're totally unadjusted, and will only be homesick for the good old ship again? And of course, once you start, there's no changing of the mind; like it or not, dead or alive, when the course has been set for a destination, that's where that ship's going to go.

They say that way back in the times of the Anarchate, crews could decide to stop anywhere they wanted to. Maybe that's one reason there isn't an Anarchate any longer. Rose told me once that on the original worlds, men used to think that if the speed of light couldn't be broken, man could never populate the Galaxy. So they worked and worked on finding flaws in the light-speed equations. And found them—in the wrong place. C-limitation held; it was time-dilation for subjective consciousness that didn't. A light-year was going to feel like a year, however you went about it. For a while, that seemd to kill it. Item of faith; the Galaxy is too big for Man.

Rose said the two things they didn't count on were the great length of time they'd have to do it in, and the stupid perversity of humanity.

And there are still a lot of the stupidly perverse around, judging from the constant influx of ships to Randar. Of course, Randar used to be a Galactic Control Center, or something, back before the 'Tween-Times, though now it's just one of the 60,000 or whatever thoroughly populated systems. There must have been more traffic through Randar then, I suppose, but they probably had better checking facilities too.

Not that I draw my pay for thinking so much. By this time I'd already spotted the silver speck of my target, centered nose on to it, and punched APPROACH. That flicker again, and I was floating the standard four meters off the yacht's hull.

It was a small two-man model, about a hundred meters along the thicker axis. I knew the type; Irango's close enough that the ship styles haven't diverged much anyway. Everything looked in order; the airlock had jutted out automatically when the yacht was trapped in the shipnet. I punched LINKAGE, and my faithful checker-ship swung around the other hull at a constant four-meter distance until directly over the airlock, then dropped to clip on. I went through the routine. Checker-ship defenses on; nothing short of a direct neutron blast, if that, would faze it. Personal defenses on; I was similarly protected. Yacht's air breathable, not that I'd have to sample it myself; and airlock open.

Squirming backward out of my tiny projectile, I floated ungracefully feet-first into the yacht.

The passageway I entered was deserted—normal, quiet, even almost clean. (Most ships tend to disintegrate, dirtwise.) I pushed off from the bulkhead, ignoring doors to either side. Whatever the size or shape of a ship, its sealsafe will always be in the precise center; it's the only topographical point every ship has. There was no need for stealthy glances over my shoulder—I had the confidence which comes from carrying more defensive apparatus than that allowed a Galax-cruiser of the S.N.

I swung open the heavy metal door at the end of the radial corridor, and looked into the ship's bridge. It was cluttered with furniture and controls, mostly of molded ceramics with luxury wood fittings; garish. It was only on the second sweep of my eyes that I caught sight of the man slumped in a swivel chair before the viewscreen, staring at the image of Randar 13, limbs drifting to either side in the free-fall equivalent of a relaxed sprawl.

" 'Lo," I said politely. "Mind if I monitor your sealsafe?"

Not that I wasn't going to anyway, but no need to be rude about it. The only response, however, was a possible accentuation of the slump.

I didn't have time to waste, so I crossed to the sealsafe in its central mounting. It's a small black cube, about two centimeters on a side. I got a duplicate from my suit's chest-cache, examined each surface, chose the proper one, and pressed it to the top of the yacht's sealsafe. The little click was audible as transfer began.

There was a short silence, and then the man in the chair opened his mouth. He tried to speak, and made a sound like rust-coated tonsils. He stopped with his mouth open, and for a moment I could see his tongue rising slowly in freefall. Then he got it under control and tried again.

"Stars ... sure pretty."

"You haven't seen 'em for seventeen years, maybe. See stars on the job all cycle like me, get pretty sick of them."

He tried again. "Nice planet you got there."

"If you like minus 227 degrees outdoors."

That shut him up for a while. I waited for the transfer to be completed. That's the longest part of the job; it's quicker to get out to a ship and back than to monitor its sealsafe. The fellow was eager to communicate, though. They're all that way—except the ones who try to extinguish me. Anyway, he tried again.

"What're you doing?"

"Monitoring your sealsafe." He looked blank. "This little gizmo. When you left Irango, they inserted up-to-date records in here. I'm getting them out. The Analysts will use them to bring our knowledge of what's happened in Irango up to time-space present."

"Up to what?"

I blinked at such ignorance, and then realized he must have been just a kid at departure. Seventeen years was a long time to remember things anyway. "Time-space present, fellow. Up to the latest possible time you can know anything—its distance from you in light speed measured as past time. In your case, up to seventeen years ago. We won't know what's happening on Irango now until seventeen years from now. We'll know what's happening now along the periphery when the sealsafes sent out now get here in another five thousand odd years. Simple enough?"

"I didn't know what it was," said the other. "Tried to take it apart some years back with a torch ... had a lot of time to kill."

I chuckled at the unfamiliar idiom. "Impossible and undesirable, fellow. Couldn't dent this thing with anything from a laser to a krotie blast. You know, there are cases of ships absolutely blown into their component atoms by reactor backfire, and nothing came on into the terminal shiptrap nets except the seal-safe." It was a ludicrous yarn, but indicated some of the facts. "And undesirable, especially for you, 'cause if you'd come in without it, we'd know at once, and blow you into little tiny bits soonest."

"Huh! Why's that?"

The reason involving another function of the sealsafe not for general consumption, I skipped over the matter, saying, "It's done clear across the inhabited Galaxy, from Leidul to Olva; and it's been customary under the Amalgamate, and before, during the 'Tween-times, and before that, during the Anarchate. You are questioning 64,000 worlds and a half a million years?" The seal-safe clicked again, and I scooped up my duplicate cube. "So long. Be good." I started off.

Cosmos, but the guy exploded. "Wait!" He scrabbled for a moment, and managed to jerk himself erect. "Aren't you the cold one! Damn it, you're the first man I've seen in half my life. Welcome me! Shake my hand or something. And get my feet on a planet." His arm was jutting out towards me like a piston. I grabbed it and pumped a bit.

"Sorry, ol' fellow, but I really do have to be on my way. It's just that I'm awfully rushed, and actually, I'm not supposed to be the welcoming committee. Customs will board you as soon as I leave, and they're just swell guys. If you don't need a lot of rehabilitation, you can be in-system and down-planet in a few days. And you look fine to me, considering you've been all alone."

"I had a partner when I started," he admitted, hanging his head in embarrassment. "We were totally incompatible. I killed her three years out of Irango."

"These things happen," I consoled. "Don't worry. Randar doesn't care about en route activities." I turned to go, then thought of something. "Oh, fellow, just don't kill anybody in this system. There's some law against it. It can be mean."

His eyes transluced a bit, and I decided I was pushing him too fast. Wasn't my job anyway. Let Customs and Quarantine rehabilitate and orient him. I smiled, waved, pushed off down the corridor. He collapsed into his chair again, and glumly watched me out of sight.

III.

I felt rushed for time as I squeezed out of the airlock, which is nothing new. The ships keep coming in as fast as we can check them. The only thing that would help, I thought, as I detached the checker-ship from the yacht's airlock, would be more checker-pilots, and there just aren't the men with the capability. Oh, I suppose there are hundreds, or anyway dozens, of men in the system with the technical ability and all for the job. It's the other aspect. It's not enough to be smart about the right things; you've got to be dumb about the wrong things. Here you're putting a fellow in a defensive ship and suit that just has to be impervious to any weapon known to man, and giving him weapons that are just bound to destroy any defense known to man (yes, I've been tempted, and no, I haven't Z-beamed my Q-screen) and then you don't want him to take over the whole system. I don't know that I could take over Randar with my ship and suit, and don't know why anyone drawing my salary would want to. Enough is all I can consume.

But it seems I'm deviant on this. At any rate, the psy-guys who accepted me reject over ninety percent of the otherwise qualified candidates on the grounds that they'd do just that, or be tempted to. I guess I'm just too nice for that. I guess I'm just too dumb..

By this time, I'd keyed the HOMING switch, and dropped in a second down to the surface of Randar 13, straight into my homing slot at light speed, where the shiptrap detractors stopped me from smashing on through the planet. Shoving the transfer cube out of the ship into the tube which would pull it into Security, I received an unused one in exchange, and shot myself into space again. Slapped on the viewscreen. "Irango at Coord 4 clear," I told Rose. "Number 2 Boarding Routine, and a couple weeks Rehab should take care of him."

"And something else had come in during your dawdles," snapped Rose. "Take a look at Coordinate 9 at once."

"What's in there?"

"We don't know. When it slapped into the net a few minutes back, it set up a deafening squeal straight across all the normal operating wave-lengths—sort of yelling 'Me first, me first!' Take it on priority, so we can function again. Coord 9."

"Where's it from, Flyn?"

"Can't be where it says it's from, Cotter. On the double!"

So I doubled.

A few seconds later, delay caused by needing to hop twice to clear the planet, I was at off-Coordinate 9. The shiptrap net should have braked the new intruder to zero just ten kilometers ahead of me. But I could see nothing likely against the star-splattered blackdrop. I waited a moment, scanning across the far sparks of the suns, my irritation growing. By this time I should have built up quite a bit of drop towards the planet under gravity; any object out there should have stuck out clearly in reverse against the sky. Impatiently, I pointed directly into the Coordinate itself, and pushed APPROACH. The ship jumped; and still there was nothing. Which was ridiculous, as I must now be within four meters of something, or I wouldn't have come to a stop at all short of the end of my leash.

Then I almost exploded in laughter. A couple of meters ahead of me, revolving about itself in solemn circles, floated the troublemaker—a small pod, some meter long. I slid down my ship's grabhole, and extended my arm towards the pod. It was just beyond reach. Withdrawing my arm, I realized the ludicrousness of the situation.

Four meters was the nearest the APPROACH system would let me come to any material object, my arm was some deal shorter than that, and obviously this little pod had no airlock onto which to connect. And if anyone has ever figured out how to advance precisely three meters forward at 300,000 kilometers a second, the method has yet to be built into my checker-ship. So having come all the way out here to get to this thing, how was I to get at it?

I was baffled a moment, and then—"when in doubt, freeze up"—followed through with routine. I pushed LINKAGE. My little ship orbited in a neat semi-circle about the little pod, and then drifted in towards it as if it were just another spaceliner. The pod and checker gently bumped, and the pod silently burst into two halves at the axis. In the hollow floated a small silver cube. I reached out my suited hand and scooped it in. And that was that.

Turning ship, I struck down for the homing slot, made the cube transfer and was in space again on the rebound. It was just beginning to come home to me that something had come across space at light speeds to Randar—with no apparent source of motive power. Well, there must be specialists for it, I decided, out of my jurisdiction now.

Rose was on screen again. "Well enough, Cotter. Now back to routine. S.N. Cruiser from Mike's Hangover, 740 LY flight, Coord 1."

"Am doing. Remind someone to remove that little rascal at 9. It's no ten-thousand-manner, but it could sure make a neat little hole in the next ship coming in to that Coord."

"Thanks, Cot. Someone's already on it," he said. He sounded subdued. Usually he'd remind me to stick to my own duties.

I slapped for off-Coordinate 1, and my ship leaped. You know, I used to think they were called checker-ships because they jumped. That's 'cause there's a board game, very old and traditional in my clan, with pieces called checkers that jump. Of course now I realize it's the other way round—the game must have been named for the ships. But that's both there and then.

At least the Space Navy ship was plainly visible from the off-Coordinate. Over a kilometer across, she hung in the blackness like a minor moon. I looked the hull over, noting worse pitting than the familiar moons of Randar 2, and felt somewhat dubious about survivors. Still, I saw no actual breaks, and even where there have been, I've found tenacious incumbents hanging on ... though usually I'd rather not have. Anyway, regular precautions were in order.

In the cruiser's rotation, the markings on the bow spindle were swinging into view. I stepped up the magnification and sighed, as a pleasant illusion was shattered. Letters in Old Northern script, long superceded here, proclaimed that the ship was the S.N. Biphotonic from Maixa Nova. Too bad—"Mike's Hangover" had sounded like more fun. I reached for the comtrans, but never keyed it. Rose appeared suddenly on my screen. He looked real bad.

"All right, Cotter, the rest of your schedule is cancelled. Report to Central Headquarters at once."

"What are you talking about, Rose?" I asked in confusion, and then, as an awful light seemed to dawn, "What did I do this time?"

"I said to CHQ at once," snapped Rose. He added, "You're in the clear. Something real big has come up. Jump!" He was gone.

What the Cosmos! I jumped; but jumping, I seethed and swore.

To get to Headquarters' Central was a manual job; my checker-ship's automatics naturally weren't keyed to that combination. It took several minutes to jockey into a waiting slip on the roof of HQ. They must have expected me. The auto-beams hadn't tried to blast me down. Though I'll bet they couldn't have.

A gang of groundmen in uniform were already racing out to me. They grabbed me and started to drag me along towards the drops. If I'd braked my suit, of course, they'd have had a time budging me, but I was thinking that if I were due for a spanking, it might be as well to keep my suit on.

We proceeded on the double through a series of drops, monos, slides, lifts, and vehicles that made my head spin, and in a couple of minutes were catapulted down a chute into a large hall filled with gadgets, servos, maps, men, and gizmos. I was shoved up to a pudgy officer with braids on his hat and medals on his boots; my captors let go and scattered. The general stood silent and withdrawn, gazing abstractedly just over my head. I waited, and presently his eyes slowly dropped to rest on me. They widened.

"Who are you?" he rasped. "What are you doing in here?"

I wished I knew. I shrugged. His shoulders and cheeks swelled angrily.

"How did you get in here?" he yelled. "Show your authorization at once, man! Where's your badge?"

I looked over my shoulder. The men who had dragged me in had turned to vacuum. I looked back at the general and smiled in friendly fashion. It didn't take.

He whirled around. "Guards!" he shouted. "Take this intruder out, and get rid of him. He's broken security."

"Cos— cushions, sir," I interpolated. "I didn't ask to come here. Your boys brought me off my checking schedule. If I'm not wanted, I'll get back to it." I was a bit sore.

He looked at me again, unpuffed himself, and waved the guards off me. "Oh, the checker-fellow. Why didn't you tell me so at once?" He glared at me. "You almost got shot. You're going up in just. . . fourteen minutes. Coordinate 7."

He turned away, forgetting me.

I tried to scratch my head in bewilderment, and gauntlets scraped screechingly across helmet. I desisted. People swarmed around me like bugs in a brush fire. I wandered around looking for a place to sit down, and came across Flyn Rose sitting at a console. With relief, I hurried up to him.

"Give me a clue, Flyn?"

He swivelled to look up at me. "Oh, Cotter. What a mess, hmm? Sorry it had to fall on you, kid."

"Thanks a lot. Now could you tell me just what has fallen on me?"

"No one really is positive, but it just might be an authentic ship of the Anarchate."

"Stop kidding. There hasn't been an Anarchate for a couple hundred thousand years."

"Correct," Rose agreed. "Did you notice the general atmosphere in here might suggest some occurrence out of the ordinary run of things? Or did you perchance think this normal headquarters operating procedure?"

"Uh ... for all I know. But where could an Anarch ship have come from?"

"Heard of the Magellanics?"

"Come off it, Flyn! No one's ever been to the Clouds. They're much too far."

"So we have two impossibilities, you catch? They happen to add up to one actual event."

I sat on the floor for want of a chair and looked up at Rose pleasantly.

"Tell me all about it, Papa," I suggested.

"In nine minutes?" asked Rose. He switched into the rapid patter he used while controlling. "The cube you brought in from the pod at Coord 9. It was stuffed with information in dozens of languages, mostly mathematical, which may take us years to sort out. But the lead message was that the pod would be followed within an hour by a ship of the Anarchate, returning from the Lesser Magellanic Cloud."

"Hold on. How could the message be interpreted so soon? I mean, no one knows anything of the Anarchs' language, do they?"

Rose looked perplexed. "True, but... Cot, there's no time. Take my word on it, there was no mistake about that message. It said the ship was leaving Golgaronok—as they called the Lesser Magellanic—right after the cube. Gave the ship's size and time of arrival in terms of the period and dimensions of Randar 4—and I guess that hasn't changed much—and hoped there were still human beings around to greet them on arrival."

I was out of my depth. I supposed I should say something. I asked, "Does it fit? I have no idea of the distance or the time."

"Seems to fit. The Magellanics are some one hundred fifty thousand light years off, which means the ship must have left this galaxy some three hundred thousand years ago. We know the Anarchate was functioning up to about two hundred thousand years ago, and there's no reason to think they hadn't been in existence at least as long as the Amalgamate, is there?"

"Er... I wouldn't know, Flyn. That was a good many megayears before my ancestors joined the human race."

Rose looked interested. "I thought you were pure human stock, Oren."

"I don't think so. It doesn't show on me, but most of my clan have only five fingers to a hand. And we're mainly a lot thinner than most Randarians, you know."

"That's not necessarily racial. You do interbreed with other people, don't you?"

I grinned at him. "We could, but mostly we don't."

We both knew we were ignoring the crisis. I appreciated Rose giving my subconscious time to catch up with some of the reality. "Then your ancestors didn't join the human race, they rejoined," he said. "They must have been lost relics of the Anarchate during the Tween-Times."

"I wouldn't know. I never studied history. There was just too much of it."

"Don't blame you," said Rose, sneaking a look at the clock. "What system did your ancestors come from, any idea?"

"Earth. You might not have heard of it. A star some 200 LY from here called Sun." He looked blank. "S ... u ... n."

"You're right. Never heard of it. What about it that I might have heard of? I've studied a little history."

That was a tough one. I thought a bit. All I could think of was tobacco and 64-square board games, both of which are claimed by every planet around.

"Have you ever come across the old 5-7-5 poems," I asked tentatively. "By ancients called Issa and Basho?"

"Hey, are they from Earth? Basho . . . something about an amphibian, how did it go?"

"It's supposed to be seventeen syllables in the original, but I can't stretch it out that long in Randarian. Something like "OLD POND/FROG JUMPS/KER-PLOP."

"Great stuff," said Rose. "I guess Earth rates a salute."

"How much more time?" I asked.

"You were supposed to go two minutes ago. Don't sweat it. Wait till you're notified."

"It's me they want?"

"You're available."

"I'll cut my carotid."

"Afterwards, please."

I tried to sum up. "Then a ship was sent out, say some three hundred kiloyears ago, under the Anarchate, to the Lesser Magel-lanic Cloud. The distant descendants of the original crew got there about one hundred fifty kiloyears ago, while the Galaxy was in the depths of the 'Tween-Times. Unlikely as it seems, they got there both alive and capable of starting back. And now they—I mean their descendants—come back to the new Amalgamate."

"Precisely."

"They're lucky they didn't return during the 'Tweens. No one around to stop them."

"They couldn't have returned sooner," observed Rose. "They're right up to space-time date. Light only travels so fast."

That was true, too.

"Maybe they haven't survived the return," I mused half wishfully. "A viable ecology population for a trip of that length ... I wonder how many people it's made for. What size is it supposed to be?"

Rose swung his chair away from me. "The Anarchate liked doing things to the big scale," he said briskly. "But your work is the same, for any size ship. Don't worrry, Cotter."

"The size, Flyn ... I asked you the size."

Rose looked down on me squatting there, something strange back in his eyes. "The ship you are to check," he said precisely, "is 6000 kilometers radius."

I remained calm. "You mean," I said quite as precisely, "it is 6000 meters radius, which is larger than any ship under the Amalgamate."

"I mean," and Flyn Rose's voice reached a degree of precision I would never be able to match, "six thousand kilometers radius period."

I giggled.

IV.

Then a voice behind me was yelling beautiful obscenities; and there was the puffed general again, asking what idiot let this moron into the imbecilic Headquarters wearing a fornicated checker-suit and didn't they realize if I scratched I'd blow the place apart. I guess I was pretty formidable. So someone told him again that I was the checker, and he shook my gauntlet and thanked me for my dedication to the service and to get the hell out of there because this thing would be in, in four and a half minutes. Everybody joins in to shove me out on the roof again. Just as we get to the roof some jerk-clerk from Physdiv comes tearing up waving an abacus, and says don't we all realize a planet-size mass suddenly laying off Randar 13 is going to add a grav-pull which will swing the whole planet right out of orbit, and somebody (me, I could see it coming) has just got to do something about it. His boss comes ripping after him, and says don't worry, a ship's mostly space anyway, and hasn't got a squashed lead core, and knocked the clerk down two stripes on the spot. Everyone's clapping me on the back, and telling me what a hero I am, and what a snap it's going to be. And before I can ask why I'm such a hero if it's such a snap . ..

... there I was in the checker-ship, a hundred kilometers off-planet, sighting for off-Coordinate 7, and the heroic grin was already sort of wearing off me. I felt like heading in-system for Randar 11 or 6, and who in Cosmos would blame me? No human born; only the Board.

Some blame fool was yelling, "Keep radio silence. Keep radio silence," on all wave lengths, till someone snuck up and garrotted him, and there was silence. And there I was, in the silence, slicing up to off-Coord 7, peeling my eyes for the sudden emergence of a planet-sized ship ahead of me, when something in that concept sort of struck me between the eyes; and I stomped on full reverse and jumped back ten thousand kilometers. Not too soon, either; that ship just loomed up and smeared itself over half the sky the second I vacated. I felt like evaporating right out my pores, thinking how it would have been if I'd been way in there at off-Coord 7, just ten kilometers from the central Coordinate itself, when that monster smashed in there.

I wasted several seconds swearing at the whole tribe of idiots back on 13 who hadn't foreseen this item. That's when I guess I really got scared. Because then I realized that not only me, but nobody else had had time to think through any of the implications of this yet.

Just then, of course, in excited squeals from my communicator, someone incoherently warned me not to go all the way in to the off-Coordinate. Thanks grounder. Radio silence, remember?

I was trying to recapture my bearings, lost when the universe flopped over two seconds back. IT had definitely arrived. In fact, IT seemed to have taken over completely. I did my best to ignore IT until my mind and belly were in better shape to cope. The instruments were being silly, I couldn't start with them.

I looked aft and left, caught with relief the familiar crescent of 13, then higher the tiny etched circular halo where my helmet polarized out the solar radiation of the primary. That gave me at least a positional plane, and I came back to my instruments with more sense of reality. The distance indicator showed I had almost 4000 kilometers of empty space around me. In spite of first impressions, I wasn't on the verge of smashing into IT.

Now I could look back at this new invader. My mind flashed several alternate versions in succession—a vast plain down there, an overhanging stone up there—and settled for a bulging wall out there. It was too big, it was too close, but it was once more just a separate thing within space which I could look at and come to terms with.

As I hung like a mite in space, dominated by that overweeningly presumptuous wall, I realized they'd have to be some terms indeed.

I was through being rushed into this affair. I spent a leisurely thirty seconds giving this thing the once-over, and the twice-over. Big? It was pockmarked with craters you could mislay the whole Headquarters Complex in ... and they just dimpled its hide. I mean, it was planet-size, even if a minor planet. It was so beat up by running into vacuum at effective light speed that it didn't look artificial, just a pocky satellite. I scanned vainly for airlocks or cargo hatches, and then realized I was carrying ideas over from my checking of smaller ships. If I could have seen an opening from there, it would have been kilometers across.

While my thoughts ran largely on the asininity of letting myself get in such a situation, my fingers followed routine. They pointed the ship at the monster's side and punched APPROACH. And there I was, that orthodox four little meters over an expanse of twisted and warped and contorted metal. And it was down all right; my body felt that the instant my ship bumped gently down on the surface.

In front of me an overarching slab of metal framed a dreary landscape, wide and wild to the horizon, of tilted sheets and pointing spires and collapsed domes and canted silvers. No detectable atmosphere, said one little dial brightly. It was out of its element too.

I eyed the communicator, flipped it on. The low, uneven hiss of the Galaxy filled my ears. Nobody was speaking, no one from Randar 13, no one from the visitor .... no one was keeping up the usual checking chatter, and that got to me. If they'd called the other checkers off their rounds, they meant it about radio silence. Those incoming ships had to be checked and shunted; there are only 24 slots to fill at 13.

I had been given no instructions, damnitall! It was usually my option to make radio contact with an incomer or not, according to whether I wanted to be expected when I boarded. All rule of thumb. I looked at my thumb; shut up and tiptoe, it said. I agreed and switched off the communicator.

I wanted, now that I was down for a moment, to for once figure out something of what I was going to do before I started doing it. I knew why the brass boys were in a rush; they didn't want Randar 13 to be blasted out of space. Simple as that. We can feel pretty confident of keeping superiority to all the ships that come in, no matter how belligerent or touchy the occupants. No ship can possess the resources, the industrial complexes, the manpower, to make and keep up an armament array like that kept up in a 14-planet system. Until, just possibly, now. A potentially real rival to Randarian power had appeared on the premises with a bare hour's warning—and no one had any idea who manned it.

So I was supposed to go ahead and deal with it in the normal mode. The high-uppers were counting on the primary function of the sealsafe. Gaining information from past millenia was highly secondary at the moment; they wanted my transfer cube to fuse the sealsafe, so that at any moment the new arrival could be sealed safe—every energy source within it damped utterly until the occupants could be brought to heel. Thus Randar will remain on the high orbit. As I say, this function isn't something we chat about everywhere. But it's the real reason I've got to get into every new arrival fast.

But whatever the hurry, if I didn't get the transfer and sealsafe cubes together, it wasn't going to do anybody any good. If anyone on this thing was going to start communication by blasting R-13 out of space, I could just better hope they didn't do it before I could size up the situation in a leisurely way. I wasn't planning to race in ahead of the angels.

Cautiously, I squirmed backwards out of the checker and rose to my feet. I stood to mid-shin in metallic dust, collected in the hollow of this cup, and scanned the drably twisting horizon. I wondered if I couldn't legally claim this world as my own by right of first touchdown after the requisite ten-thousand year hiatus. I'd name it—what had Rose said—Golgaronok. A monstrous name for a monstrous beast.

Adjusting my personal gravity control until I was exactly at equilibrium against Golgaronok's slight pull, I read off the scale: .21 g. Then I slapped my feet against the surface and slowly rose above that surface.

Gradually, the resting checker-ship sank beneath me and my view widened. Stark and jagged, the world ship lay beneath me. I was looking for breaks. I gave up on that when I was high enough to see to the bottom of a crater at least 400 meters deep—and unbroken. The skin of this behemoth was thick! I reset my gravity control to fractional weight and descended again.

Back in my checker-ship, I pondered the procedure for boarding an antique Anarchical ship. I had the vague impression that, as far as possible, the Amalgamate had tried to continue the older checking methods, procedures, and coordinates in every way.

After all, the 'Tween-Times was only some 90,000 years; and by the time the Amalgamate was forming in this spiral arm, survey ships of the Anarchate were still coming back from the Far Rim. If the present method of entry was based on the old, my LINKAGE button should swing me around Golgaronok until I was over the pulses from the nearest airlock, and then screw me onto threads matching my checker's. Nothing better occurred to me than to try—or else go exploring over millions of square kilometers of surface for unknown signs—so I reached for the LINKAGE button ...

And paused.

And imaged myself in the checker-ship bumping and crunching my way over the surface of Golgaronok to the nearest airlock. Better think a little more.

Couldn't lift forward with that bulge hanging in front. And behind ... rear-viewing, I shuddered; I had come to 'ground' in the hollow of a kind of Klein Bottle. I thought some more. Ship won't move sideways—can't swing it while lying on this surface—what about... ? I reached for APPROACH. Sort of in reverse, but...

Better think it through.. .. All right.

I pushed APPROACH, the proximity adjuster sprang into action, and the ship lifted me neatly four meters off the surface. Before grav could pull me down again, I had leaped ten miles out.

Now LINKAGE. Think .. . push.

The checker ship swung smoothly around Golgaronok. The rim of Randar 13 rose above the horizon. Well enough, not blasted out yet. I'd hate to think, if it went, of all the good rotgut that would go with it.

Around and around—and then down. I swivelled to look beneath me. From the surface of the ship below, a vastly lengthening pillar was lifting priapously towards me, slowly rearing up hundreds of meters until it touched; rotated; locked .. . silence.

Somehow, I found myself muttering the very words that tradition attributes to the first human rediscoverer of Randar 4, over 50,000 years back. "Damn, I didn't think I'd make it this far." Why not? Great minds think in unison, and the great phrase is eternal.

I carefully rechecked the defenses of ship and suit, then tested the air within the airlock. This, my first clue to Golgaronok's inner conditions, offered both discouragement and relief, real heavy on the relief. Sulphur, methane, ammonia, zinc... no trace of oxygen. The atmospheric adjusters must have passed on long ago, and all life with them. My spirits rose perceptibly.

I paused for the next consideration. In a usual boarding, vertical direction didn't exist; I just pushed into the larger ship in free fall. In this case, I would be swinging the airlock open beneath me—and I didn't know how far the drop would be. Again I adjusted my gravity control to weightlessness—still .21—then moved the lever and opened the lock beneath me.

Below, the extended tube of the airlock stretched down darkly for hundreds of meters until it framed a tiny pinkish circle in the distance. The light streaming down from my checker lit up a small section of it: hard, bare metal. I examined the sides of the tube, without success, for signs of a ladder. Resetting for fractional weight, I began to drop slowly down the shaft.

As I drifted down, the checker-ship vanishing in gloom above, the pink spot below hardly seeming to approach, I scanned the walls of the shaft. They swam up past me, pitted, encrusted, eroded. At times the blankness was broken by vacant roots of metallic shelves. I looked down; still a long way to drop. Words of an ancient scripture came to mind unbidden, one of the pre-space prophets, "Down, down, down, would the fall never come to an end?"

Gradually the base of the protruding column approached, only to be succeeded by more hundreds of meters of the wider tube from which it had been protruded; the pink spot glowed wider in its own good time, and abruptly I was at the bottom of the shaft. I hovered at null-grav and looked out and down on the vista.

It was ... oh, it was just incredible.

It was like looking down on another planet through drifting pink clouds. Far down, kilometers below me, loomed ragged contour lines as of ranges of hills—or mountains. This was a ship? Since when did a ship have topography? And meteorological phenomena?

V.

From where I hung like an insect in the sky, curving ceilings spread smoothly out in all directions. And below, the scurrying pink mists. The light glowed evenly everywhere. It was unnerving to hang at such a height, and I moved closer to the shaft wall, but there was no place to grasp. Far down to my right I thought I could see the source of the pink clouds: a huge funnel, from which they rose in puffs, to diffuse out into this expansive space.

Further out, what looked very like a cloudburst was moving over the distant ranges, darkening them in its passage under a downpour of, whatever it was, not water.

It looked as though someone, somewhere in this world vessel, was running at least some of the equipment, because this vast chamber collected waste. I thought I could now figure the purpose of this place. The waste products from the internal chemical and drive processes were spewn into it, and presumably were supposed to be discharged periodically into space through the airlock I had just descended. Yet it didn't appear to have been emptied for a long, long time. If those hills below were composed, as I believed, of consolidated particles solidifed from this atmosphere, they spoke eloquently of geological aeons.

I searched the area at the bottom of the shaft for the communicator that should be installed here, and found it. It was a pane of shiny glass set into the metal of the wall, untarnished after all the millenia. In it I could see my suited face, and had to grin at its woebegone and put-upon expression.

I can't say why I decide things. I just have to do what feels right at the time. A while back I had decided to tiptoe quietly into Golaronok, mainly because I didn't know what I was getting into. Now I decided to take a chance on advertising my presence, and for the same reason: I still didn't know what I was getting into. And this seemed the time to find out. I thumbed the single stud beneath the glass.

There was a flickering, deep back in the glass, and my own reflection faded, to be replaced by the slowly crystallizing image of an elderly man with wrinkled canvas face, penetrating eyes, and a patch on his coveralls bearing the haphazardly meaningless non-symbol of the Anarchate—no two were supposed to have been alike. His eyes bored into mine. He spoke. It was absolutely incomprehensible.

"XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"

He paused, and repeated. I couldn't wrench my eyes from his gaze, and this time I at least caught the syllabic structure of his words.

"Olastra konestai forsein kal undus merd."

He waited and said it again, his eyes still fixed on mine. And somehow it struck me that undus must be a form of "to teach," and konestai of "language."

Again he paused and repeated. This time I understood him to say, "I shall teach you the basic kal of my language"; and even before he had repeated the sentence for the fifth time, I had figured out by myself that the word kal must mean principles.

The next pause was longer, but I was entranced with delight at this tutorial technique. How much study I could have saved with this approach to linguistics!

His next speech was slow and took about a minute. Again it sounded meaningless, except that the sounds interlinked and penetrated one another in a way that seemed not altogether nonsense—no more so than math or music, at least. When he finally stopped, eyes still fixed on me as I hovered before him, and then resumed speaking, it was in a conversational tone; and I understood him so naturally I thought for an instant he was speaking Standard Amalgamate.

"I have now given you the basic principles of our tongue," he said with a smile. "It is totally based on the simple mnemonic correlates I have just fed into your subconscious, and all its further structure and syntax and vocabulary are built up by procedural steps which, being in one-to-one correspondence with the human synapses, can be carried out by your brain as well as by mine—assuming, as I hope, that you are human. Now that you comprehend what sound patterns correlate with various basic mental units, you should have no difficulty in understanding me. I wish I would be able to understand you, but as I shall have died in Magellanic Lesser some 150 millenia before you receive this message—" he grinned wryly "that, I fear, will not be possible."

I was not watching a present individual, then, but an image from forever ago. I listened as the old man continued.

"It would be natural for you to anticipate a communications device at this spot, assuming that this is the airlock you have chosen to enter. I do not know, of course, if you are an official checker of the type we are accustomed to employ, a chance visitor, an armed raiding party. I do not know if you have heard of the Anarchs, or if we are now no longer even a memory, or if Man himself still survives in the Home Galaxy. But we have wanted to do all in our power to assure that, whatever the circumstances, the meeting between you who were left behind, and we who are wandering back from the Magellanic, goes smoothly and happily to both sides. We have wanted," and how complexly precise was the verb form he actually used and I understood, "we have wanted to make the conditions fair for yourselves as well as for our own distant descendants. We really would not know, were there to be any real or supposed conflicts of interest, which of you to back. For we do not know what you shall have become in the 300,000 years since our separation. Nor can we be certain of the condition of our own descendants 150,000 years hence. They also may have progressed, may have stagnated, or deteriorated. But, perhaps without sufficient reason, we in some ways have been able to feel that we can be more sure of their future, which we are now planning for, than of yours, which has long been beyond our control. For protection of yourselves, should our descendants prove regressive, or the lines of progress too diverse for reconciliation, we have provided certain defenses. Of one I may speak; they will not be able to leave this ship until you on the outside have accepted them. There is a Barrier. On the other hand, you from outside will be permitted to enter at will; but you will be unable to introduce weapons. There is a Barrier.

"I wish I could go so far as to assure you that you are welcome to enter without personal danger to yourselves, but that I cannot do. If our descendants have not rejected the heritage we are passing on to them, they shall welcome you and, whoever you may be, strive to give and to receive the fruit of what our two branches of humanity may have separately achieved and become. But one would be irrational who tried to speak with assurance of the behavior of his offspring of the 6000th generation. Whoever you are, wherever you came from, consider this: what has happened to your line of descent in the past 150,000 years?" He paused, as if expecting a response. I had none.

"So enter if you will, but enter with due caution," said the image. "We hope our arrangements have made it impossible for you to harm the people of the ship, or for them to harm at least those of you who remain outside the Barrier. More we cannot do."

His voice grew more informal. "Now you won't easily be able to go straight down from here." His image faded and was replaced by a schematic diagram. "After departure, this air-lock antechamber is slated to become a waste-deposit area."

A pulsing blob of light must indicate my present position. I strained to make sense of the tightly cross-hatched lines, following perspective conventions I couldn't quite grasp.

"Remember," the old man was continuing, "you have a long way to go yet. You can descend most quickly—unless things have changed more than we hope—by taking the passage which will open behind you on completion of this message." The view of the schematic drew back, and a glowing line extended itself from the blob, as more complexities flowed into view. I tried to memorize as rapidly as possible as the route wove through gathering webs of multi-colored lines.

"In about one ten-thousandth of the circumference of the Ship you will arrive at a shaft, down which you may drop for about half that distance." The line stopped moving and red-shifted sharply .. . representing vertical descent?

"I cannot advise you of the geography or ecology of individual floors, as they are due for periodic change, but the stairs down to the elevators should remain; on the stairs you will meet the Barrier. Deposit your weapons and defenses there; they will be kept safely for your return." The view had continued to retreat. By now it must be covering square kilometers. I was losing track of the route, and wished he'd decelerate a bit.

The line marking the route ceased its crawl and abruptly dopplered into visibility. "The elevators will take you as deep as you desire. I suggest you head for the Administrative Offices on Floor 10 to the 5th. At least," he added, "we have so arranged the layout of the ship that whoever has overall administrative authority under any social structure almost necessarily has to be in that area—or else whoever is in that area will find themselves administrators. Why not stop in there first?"

The view had continued to pull back and back, and I could now see the whole vast arc of the ship onioning in towards the center in round after round of closely packed circular layers, far too numerous to count. Then the diagram was replaced once again by the old Anarch's wistful smile.

He looked out of the glass at my future unborn presence. "That's all, I guess," he said at last. "I hate to break it off, though. There is such incommunicable possibility for both optimism and pessimism in our futures, so much of joy and sorrow in such a touching of the endless years with our individual lives. I am not a Survey Ship man at heart; two hundred years ago I was born on the second planet touched in the cloud. I was old enough to remember when the ship left my family on a world reached later. I have grown up here on Raxnix since I was nine, and its land and seas are my home. Now the ship has stopped here again on its way Galaxyward from the heart of the cloud. Some of us are to stay; most, my sons among them, start the return. I shall stay. I would not want to die without the Home Galaxy blazing in my sky.

"But the whole is more than the mere sum of our individual short lives ... the many whose home is a planet, the many whose home is a ship. Each of us lives his life in relation to his own brief time and narrow spot—and it is only with a rare and holy shock that we realize that we are at a turning point in something far vaster than we had realized. The ship is turning homeward; what that means to any individual, it means infinitely more to Man. And to you, the ship has returned. Good luck; and, people of home, be kind to your returning brothers."

Again he smiled sadly, sighed, raised his hand in farewell. He was gone.

I waited a moment, feeling an odd sense of loss, and then pushed the stud again. No response. He was really gone.

"Someday we'll meet again," I said to the noncommittal glass, "at another airlock." I turned. In the metal side of the shaft across from me a valve had yawned. Kicking off with my feet, I floated through.

Far ahead of me stretched the passage; and with an occasional flick of my fingers along the side, I made good speed. The pink glow from behind faded, but the walls continued to glow in dim phosphorescence. I swam on, stroke after stroke, and came to the vertical shaft. It was another cylinder stretching down to a tiny circle below; this time the patch of light at the bottom was green. I pushed out towards the center of the shaft.

"Don't foul the line!"

If one could jump a meter in free-fall... I spun onto my back and, floating, looked up. A few meters above me, seated with legs dangling from a metal shelf just over the passage opening, a small boy gazed solemnly down at me. He seemed normal enough: stocky, lethargic, with bright yellow hair. From his hand extended a stick, held out over the shaft.

I hovered, and my heart started up again.

"If you can help it, mister," he said again, "please don't foul the line." He used the language I had known for some minutes now. I replied easily in the same.

"Excuse me," I managed, trying to be matter-of-fact about it. "I was just going down."

From the end of his stick a thin line dangled down past me into the shaft below.

"Long way to anywheres," he volunteered. "That's if you was going anywheres."

I was checking my wrist meters—somewhere on my way to this point I had entered highly breathable atmosphere. "Um... where are the Administrative Offices, son?"

"Never heard of them. Is it in Vrynn?"

I considered a moment. "Any idea who lives on Floor 10 to the 5th?"

"Gosh, Mister," he said. "That's the address of the Recollecters, ain't it? That sure is some ways. I haven't never been nowheres inships."

"Where do you live?" I asked, still floating on my back.

"In Vrynn," he gestured vaguely up the shaft above him.

"I see." I felt some social embarrassment at having to break off the conversation so soon, but I was in a hurry .. . "Bye, now, son."

"S'long, Mister. Remember not to foul the line."

I adjusted my weight slightly and drifted down from him along the side of the shaft. In front of me dangled that ridiculous line. It was a full hundred meters before I reached the end of it. A cluster of large, bluish birds which were swarming and hovering around the end of the line scattered at my approach, so I never did get to see one hooked.

Slowly the green circle expanded, and finally I dropped into a green space. The view from the outlet of the shaft was not so overpowering as the first I had dropped into, in this world. The ground was less than fifty meters beneath me. I suppose technically it should be called "deck," but somehow I thought of it as ground—for one reason, it was being farmed.

Furrowed soil stretched off into the distance on every side. It was an ample expanse, as wide and unconfined as one of the warm inner planets. But the ceiling was low and reached with a gentle curve to meet the land at a horizon as far as that on Randar 4. All was ploughed land, sprinkled with a few scattered sod houses at field corners. Below me a man was treading leisurely behind a plowing ox. A normal man, a normal plow, a normal ox ... except, as I saw in my descent, that it had only two horns.

The farmer looked up and, seeing me over his head, waved pleasantly.

"Excuse me for troubling you," I called down, my words coming out in the old language unthought. "Could you tell me where to find the stairs to the elevators?"

He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. "Two fields north, one east, at the corner mark," he called up. "Straight down to the Vators. Time for a bite of something, stranger?"

"Not this time, thanks," I called down. I was certainly getting favorable first impressions of the Golgaronokites. "Maybe if I pass through again."

Cheerily he waved again and turned nonchalantly back to his plowing. My conclusion had to be that folks must do some floating around up here on their own at times, even before I came. And plowed their fields and fished for birds. Real homey.

I drifted over the fields to the indicated corner and deposited myself on the first of a long descending series of steps leading into the depths. The upper three meters were cut through soil, and then smooth artificial walls luminesced a white glow. I cut off from null-grav once my feet were on the steps. Weight was still under a fourth of standard, enough to keep me down. I had a brief thought of all the little ships fast piling up, out in the worlds I came from, and then wrenched my mind back to present business. I started down, eyes searching for the promised Barrier.

I wasn't left in doubt when I hit it.

VI.

One minute I was peacefully treading down the stairs in the graceful strides of low gravity. The next I was invisibly plucked up and flung back bodily, suit and all. As I cautiously picked myself up, a voice from nowhere began gently chiding.

"Weapons and defensive apparatus are not to be brought within these boundaries," it said sweetly. "Please place your Q-screen; energy absorber; paralyser; and X-, Y-, and 2-beams in the niche to your right. They will not be touched until your return. Click."

I ignored these directions and approached the invisible screen more warily. It would seem the anarchate had been aware of our most advanced paraphernalia. Had they also known how to counter them?

I took slow steps forward until I felt a pressure against my suit, pushing me back a few centimeters. I shoved harder, and rebounded a meter. Nothing was visible but the continuous stairway leading down. I brought up my X-beam, and gave a little squirt. Nothing happened. I played it back and forth, cut it, and reached my hand out. The obstruction was still there; no give. I removed my hand from the suit and stretched it forward. It passed without resistance until my shoulder was abruptly forced back where my suit began.

Fascinating!

I backed up the stairs ten meters and tried my Y-beam. The corridor filled with corruscations. I kept it up until I began to grow warm even inside my suit screens. Then I cut it, waited a couple of minutes for the surfaces to cool down, and returned to the Barrier.

Boinggg!

I could hardly believe it. I admit I was leery of using the Z-beam. I didn't really know if it was more ultimate than my Q-screen or not. I backed up a real distance for this one, unlimbered the Z-projector, set it for a millisecond, pointed it downstairs, and pressed the stud. There was a whump, and I was knocked back on my reclamation unit. A voice shouted from down the steps:

"What in Creation you trying to do, there?"

I blinked my eyes. The stairwell was filled with roiling haze, shot through with short dying arcs of flame as quarkal redistribution levelled out. Dazedly I got to my feet and descended again. A man was standing on the other side of the Barrier. The air on his side was undisturbed. He was tall and dark, with jutting nose and furious eyes. As I appeared through the haze he spoke sharply.

"You a nut or something? I thought it was a kid! You know if I'd already passed over I might have been hurt?" He glared at me, snorted, forgot me. Stretching out his hand, he pressed it against the Barrier. The voice rang out:

"Dwellers within the world of the Ship are not to pass beyond this point at this time. Please return to lower decks. Information concerning points higher than this may be attained from Computer Deck, 12,600 North or South. Physical passage at this time is absolutely forbidden. Click."

The man answered calmly. "I am not a dweller within the world of the Ship. I wish no information from above this point. I am already beyond this point. I do not intend to pass physically. It is no longer this time. Please countermand decision."

The voice from the air hiccoughed slightly and spoke again. "Any human within the Barrier is a dweller within the world of the Ship by definition. You are now standing within the Barrier. The purpose of your attempt to pass is irrelevant; reference to information was made only for your benefit. If you actually wish to pass in a non-physical manner, only your physical body will be halted. It is now precisely now, as of this moment."

"But it is no longer of this moment," countered the man reasonably. "At the present time, this moment surely cannot be the one you previously referred to. I appeal to the 4th retractible equation in Fargut's redaction. Therefore your decision is inadequate. The physicality of my body is an unwarranted assumption, pending verification or otherwise of the Ruvel-Forst-Ganywire hypothesis of sixth-level psychogolic integration. Thus your decision is arbitrary. The point at which I was on the inside of the Barrier, moreover, has now become, in space-time point of fact, a point at which I am on the other side of the Barrier. I appeal to the equations of the galactic expansion, the computations of the ship's course, and the principle of irrelation. Therefore I am not trying to pass, but to return, and your decision is irrelevant. Finally, I resent your implication that I am a human. Please define 'human' and I shall show you that it is impossible to include me in any such category. In short, please countermand decision."

The voice was not cowed. It settled down to a point by point defense. "Though otherness may tentatively be predicated of the so-called present moment as ascertained by Fargut, this in turn presupposes a constant factor of differentiation between any and all temporal breaks in continuity ..." mounting into arguments and allusions I couldn't begin to follow. Then the man answered, and several more exchanges took place before the battle ended with the capitulation of the voice. It admitted in a somewhat depressed tone:

"It seems logically conceivable that, at least on the eighth level of psychogolic integration, you might equally validly be regarded as trying to return within the Barrier as trying to pass it. Under these circumstances, your return is allowed." It ended on a moody afterthought. "Please do not repeat this conversation to anyone. Click."

The man strolled through the invisible Barrier and on up the stairs. At the same moment I tried to get past in the other direction and ended up with what felt like a dislocated shoulder, still on the up side.

Desperately I called up to the ascending man. "Hey, there." He turned. He seemed to have completely forgotten me. "Does everybody get through like that?"

"For tens of thousands of years, Mister. Know any other way to do it?" he replied casually.

I felt very close to spoiling my dubious native cover, but if I couldn't go on, my mission was a scrub anyway. "How do you get weapons in, then?"

His eyes stared indifferently down at me. "Don't know, Mister. Tens of thousands of years, nobody's felt a need to."

"But isn't that regulation only supposed to guard us against the ... the people outside the ship?"

His eyes at last focussed on me. "Might be, for all I know, Mister. But and how's a machine to know who's from outside? Just has to stop everybody. Not that there's any use to that. If people from outside, and if there is any, wants to get weapons in some-days, reckon they'll bollix the computers quick as we does. A comp's a comp, friend."

He seemed to be eyeing me with somewhat more interest.

"But don't you know?" I burst out at random. "The ship has stopped at last. Now's when they're coming. Now's when we need the weapons for protection." I knew I was talking utter balderdash, but surely there was some way I could enlist his help. I just couldn't give up in the middle of a checking mission. All I was doing was making myself feel more and more conspicuous. I must stick out like a heavy isotope under a disintegration-counter. But this fellow didn't seem to really care.

"You might know all that," he commented, "and if you were one of them out there yourself, but sure no one that's of the Ship would know a thing like that for certain." He paused a long space, eyes fixed on me, drifitng between curiosity and indifference. The latter won, and he resumed his climb. Behind him floated down a little snatch of doggerel:

"Some as says my love she shines,

Some as says she don't... oh.

Some as says the Ship'll stop,

Some as says it won't... oh."

And he was gone.

I sat pondering for a long time before I came to a few highly obvious conclusions.

The first was that I am just simply too dumb to figure out anything actually new. I told you I wasn't necessarily chosen for my intellect. I just couldn't figure out a dodge to get past the Barrier with my weapons and defenses; nor could I figure out what was going on in this planet-ship I was crawling into. I suppose a bright guy would have been piecing together all the clues I'd been hearing and seeing, and have a nice consistent picture of what the deal was by then, But me, I still haven't got it.

My second conclusion was that I was a pretty pure specimen of coward. Here I'd thought me a real indomitable customer, going into dangerous places and out again with a whole skin, real cool about it all. Well, come to think about it, who couldn't do all I've done, in a Q-screen checker-suit? The mere thought of going on, without my suit, sort of shrivelled me up. Just me? Naked? Or as good as. Suppose something fell on me!

And third, I knew I just had to do it. It seemed to me I hadn't really been deserving the pay I'd been getting all this time. Well, now I had a chance to make it up to the Board at one shot.

I returned to the Barrier for a last attempt to pass unstripped. I looked around in vain for a direction to talk to, and then said:

"You are supposed to stop the passage of weapons. My Q-suit is not a weapon; therefore there is no reason to prevent its passage. You are supposed to stop the passage of defensive apparatus. My Z-beam is not a defensive apparatus; therefore there is no reason to prevent its passage. Please countermand decision."

"No!" answered the voice brusquely and then, after a moment's pause, "I have never heard a more illogical proposition."

I glared at the wall, and sat on the steps a while. Then I said, "Defensive units are not permitted. I call your attention to the plural form of the word 'units'. I only propose to cross with a single, teensy-weensy defensive unit—"

"No!" interrupted the voice adamantly; and then, impatiently, "Weapons and defensive apparatus are not to be brought within these boundaries ..." and all the way through to the final "click."

"I don't suppose it matters that all this is for peaceful, constructive, humanitarian purposes," I muttered, but I didn't expect much from that one. This time, the voice deigned not to answer.

What could I do? The machines might be dumb, but they were brighter than me. I'm just not a brain, is all there is to it. I clenched my fists in frustration ... it just wasn't fair. These characters inside Golgaronok had broken the rules, could get out at us all they wanted to, and we couldn't get in at them. All the old Anarchical plans so carefully laid for our protection all those ages ago were absolutely wasted. It wasn't fair!

Slowly I removed my checker-suit with all its impregnable and unstoppable arsenal, and laid it in the niche along the stairway. I sure hoped the voice was right about nobody touching it, for it would kill them. I looked a while at my food package, containing a single meal for mid-watch, and wondered what the real time was. My chrono told me I'd been on the way for 10 and a half hours, or 20 and a half, or only a half. None of them seemed right.

I wasn't hungry, but I ate what I had. All I could think was, at breakfast I had never even heard of this place I'm in! At last I took the transfer cube from the suit chest pocket. If I couldn't get that over there was no real reason for me to go on down. A sudden hope swept over me that I would be given a rational reason for turning back, then choking shame for hoping that. Let's see if a potential damping-fuse is regarded as a weapon. I returned to the Barrier clutching it as unobtrusively as possible, struck a pose before the boundary, and said confidently, "I've left my stuff. May I cross now?"

"Try it and see," said the voice noncommitally.

I cautiously leaned forward against the Barrier. It wasn't there, and I almost plunged head-first down the stairs. I caught my footing, thanks to low gravity, and whirled to glare at the invisible voice. It didn't even chuckle.

But I had the cube.

So, turning, I beat it down the stairs again, feeling as naked in my coveralls as a shell-less shellfish.

At the third or fourth curve of the flight of stairs, I reached the end of the descent. The lowest step was washed by rippling water. Coming out under an arched gate, I found myself looking out over a wide inland sea.

I'm not kidding! A real sea, with a soft breeze wrinkling the blue surface into white-caps, the smell of salt and kelp, and a small fleet of rigged sailing vessels in the offing. I know a sea when I see one; I grew up on the shores of the Polar Gulf on Randar 2.

I had barely time to wonder if this sea could possibly stretch clear around the ship on this level when, from some sort of small craft pulled up beside the lowest step, a local stood up as I approached, bowed with easy deference, and ushered me. Like a clockwork windup I let myself be led, and before I had been on this level for two minutes, I was swaying uncomfortably in the middle of blue water, and the lapping wavelets at the base of the gray lift of wall where the steps emerged were retreating behind us.

I looked around uneasily. A warmth was beating down from overhead, and I had time to see that the blue of the water was a reflection of the blue sheen of the spreading ceiling, and that some sort of life stirred in the waters. My new companion was silent, somehow propelling the vessel through the sea by the repeated insertion into the water of a long stick, shaped like the blade of a propeller, but so far as I could tell, without moving parts. We did not travel rapidly, but it was not long before my companion pointed across the water and spoke for the first time.

"The elevators are yonder, sire. You do be in good time for next embarking. May good be with you in wayfarings to come, and pay the people of Sea with kind remembrance in your thought."

I glanced at the speaker with fresh interest, the voice bringing to me what cropped hair, tanned skin, and pastiche robe had not, that my conveyer was a woman. Then I looked in the direction she had indicated.

A hundred meters of metal wall rose out of the water ahead, lifting a shaft to the overhead sky-ceiling. As we pulled nearer, I could see many little boats tossing alongside gates in the wall. The skiff I rode in entered among the others, rocking gently to the backswell from the wall. My guide waved to persons in other vessels, and greetings wafted cheerily across the waters. I didn't see anything like a motor or machine in use.

I became aware of a rapidly growing wheeze of sound; nothing was visible as its source. It mounted to a crescendo and abruptly ceased; in a moment the nearest gate retracted into the wall, and I saw within a large chamber filled with people, raised a few meters above the level of the water. The boats pulled in closer; people were clambering into them from the chamber; others were climbing from the boats up through the gates, and I felt myself being hoisted in with them. I was a floating chip, pushed about by my own passivity. But what to do but keep moving?

The gate closed behind me, and I looked about as the other newcomers scattered away. The room was a good hundred meters square, and full of people, several hundred at least, sitting on benches, drinking at fountains, wandering about deep in conversation. The number of different physiques, skin hues, and costumes was staggering; in fact, I wasn't sure I could see two people of the same appearance. I began to feel less conspicuous than I had feared. As I looked around for the elevators, the gate behind me slid open again. I looked out to find the sea evaporated, and in its place a tangle of jungly vegetation interpolated with winding paths from which more people were already emerging to clamber into the chamber. Just for a moment I wondered what had changed sea to jungle, and then realized that I was in the elevator. A large, noiseless, vibrationless elevator; I couldn't even tell if we were going up or down. Well, I guessed we couldn't go very far if it was up. But there must be a lot of room to go down in. As the door closed again, I strained to feel or hear any motion, but it was no use. But I did notice lights flashing out over the gate in numbered series; as I watched 7 turned to 8, and again the gates opened noiselessly—this time on grassy meadows, with a small cluster of low shingled houses visible some kilometers away. The next two levels lacked visibility. The 9th was shrouded in haze, while the 10th was blocked by a blank wall a few meters away—and suddenly I realized that everybody was getting off here. I wondered at the abrupt end of the line, but followed the pack quietly. Some of the others streamed to left or right along the cobbled street and halted in front of the facing wall. So I joined them, feeling a trifle foolish; hundreds of us silently eyeing a featureless wall. But I was getting the idea into my thick head that this was the transfer from local to express. For once, I was right.

But rather than a gate opening, the whole wide wall rolled straight up in the air, and I was looking in on the grand-daddy of all elevators. Within were crowds of swarming people, rows of small buildings. I could see at least half a kilometer, and still wasn't sure I could see the far side. But the crowd was pushing in, and me with them. The wall rolled down behind us.

Immediately I turned to look up over the gate. There was another series of numbers—the first 0, the second 10, which was lit, and on in multiples of 10, to 100. I figured, at fifty meters a level, that would still take me only five kilometers deep into the planet-ship. But I could expect that there would be a super-express elevator to take me to the 1000-level, 50 kilometers down, and a super² express to take me 500 kilometers down, and a super³ express to take me 5000 kilometers down, which was nearly to the center. I grinned to myself at the ease with which I accepted the situation, and then I did feel it. It hit me like I was beamed between the eyes ...

Oren screamed. He kept screaming for a long time. At last it died away, and slowly he found himself buckled in the chair, sweat rolling down his face. The Examiner was holding him gently and smoothing his hair.

"There, now, Oren, it's all right, boy. Take it easy. I should have expected it."

Oren gasped, tried to regain control of himself. "I... I really was there again. You made me live through it all again."

"You did it yourself, Oren. I just made it easy for you." The Examiner let go, looked carefully at Oren, and returned to his own chair. Seating himself, he smiled wryly at the checker-pilot. "My fault, though. There are some depths of experience that break through any hypnotic block. Even the most insensitive man ... Not you, you understand."

Oren pulled himself together. "Oh, that's me, all right. I'm not supposed to be sensitive, given my work. But," he shuddered, "it did get to me then."

"Naturally so," agreed the Examiner. "But I should have stopped the interview before it reached that point. I've already gained enough information to show that we'll need far more than you can give us alone. But—Oren, I couldn't let you stop!” He leaned forward, eyes glowing with excitement. "It's fantastic! These glimpses you give of a culture so complex it approaches our own." A sombre expression chased the excitement off his fluid features. "Let me add, you also may have presented us with as large a problem as we've faced for a very long time. Survival itself may be at stake."

Oren asked, "Ours or theirs?"

"Well, I have no choice but to think of Randar first," pointed out the Examiner. "Golgaronok, as you call it, certainly conveys an aura of threat, wouldn't you say? You tell me. You're the only person from Randar to get into that ship yet. Are they dangerous?"

"I don't know. The technology, the sheer size of it, is formidable. The people I met didn't seem at all aggressive. There was just so much I didn't see."

"Be hard-headed, Oren. I'll have to be. Will they attack Randar?"

"I don't know, sir. They seemed likable. I didn't meet their leaders I don't think."

"What of their capabilities? Could they destroy Randar?"

"I don't know," Oren repeated, feeling inane. "The ship is a miracle of construction. But it was built three hundred thousand years ago and just seems to keep going. I don't know what the people in there now can do."

The Examiner rose and paced the room. He turned to Oren. "Listen carefully. The heaviest arsenal of Randar is concentrated around this Anarch ship at the moment, or bound outward from the inner worlds. It may be possible to destroy it now. It may not be later. Should it be destroyed?"

"I don't know," said Oren, and then jerked upright. "Destroyed? Destroyed? All those people?"

"That was the question," said the Examiner. "You have observed Golgaronok. Can Randar trust them? Dare Randar assume they are benevolent or weak?"

"Trust, destroy," Oren buried his face in his palms, then looked up. "What about learn? That ship, what's in it, who's in it, what they know . . . We can't just blow it up without trying to learn . .. and all those people."

"Then just what does Randar do with this monster dumped on its doorstep, threatening its existence, its way of life?"

"It learns and it teaches," said Oren, taken aback by his temerity. "It does what it always does with any ship of any size. It finds out what's happening where it's come from, what the present situation inside is, and it brings the passengers back to civilization, helps them readjust to the mainstream of humanity. That's what we're supposed to do. I say that's what we should do now."

The Examiner stood, eyes downcast, for a time. The he looked up, and said, "Thank you, Cotter Oren. That is most helpful. But insufficient. We must learn more: Which means you must continue your descent into Golgaronok. But not now. You need several days of sleep. Do you know your present condition? Look at your arm."

Open raised his arm, and rolled back the ragged ends of his coverall sleeve. The shape of the bones beneath the skin was easily apparent.

"If I didn't have you under hypnosis," continued the other, "your mind would be in the same condition as your body. And— though I don't want to worry you—if I kept going too much longer by this method, you'd feel perfectly fine until I let you out of it... and then you'd quite possibly be dead."

"So the examination is over?"

"For the present."

"Then I have one question, sir. Did I get the cube to the Center all right? Did I make the transfer?"

The Examiner frowned. "I can't tell you."

Oren was startled by the sudden anger that poured into him. He found himself rising, looming over the little inquisitor. "You said you'd tell me everything after the Examination. You'd better tell me that! Did I carry out my mission? You've got to tell me!"

The Examiner had risen also. He seemed as furious as Oren. He yelled back, "Don't be a fool, Oren! The answer's in your mind! Do you remember?"

Oren took a step back and commenced kneading his forehead spasmodically. "No, sir," he said at last, quietly. "I only remember as far as you've helped me, actually." He paused, then, "I'm sorry I misunderstood. Could you tell me how I got back out, then? By myself?"

The Examiner smiled. "Sit back in your chair. While I remove the hypnosis."

Oren leaned back. He tried to make some over-all sense out of what he had been remembering, tried to push past the barrier of memory at which the interrogation had stopped, tried to forget it all simultaneously... and suddenly he had time enough only to feel that tons of dark sand were pouring on his head, sands of uttermost exhaustion and fatigue and disability and weakness, and he was as if snuffed out of existence....

VII.

Gradually Cotter Oren's mind fell out of nothingness into a semblance of existence. To exist was to fall, to drop deeper and deeper towards the center. To transfer to larger and larger elevators, descending deeper and deeper into a world, a universe, Galgaronok.

He lingered near the wall that opened. It didn't go up at every stop. Sometimes he could see the wall far off to the right or left rising or falling. When the nearest wall rose the scenery was always different: farms, forests, parks, occasionally villages, once a fair-sized city—all reminiscent of scenes on the planets, but all with lowering roofs some 30 to 40 meters overhead. A vertical culture, Oren thought vaguely. Sometimes the views were unbelievable and incomprehensible, and then something in Oren reminded him that this was not the real experience, but a later hypnotic recollection of it; and something subjective must have gotten mixed into his memories. There could be no real Level 40,000 as the one he looked at, for instance, not in the actual universe.

The numbers mounted steadily as the elevator presumably dropped, and he began to notice the narrowing in of the horizon. At first he wasn't sure, but as time passed there could be no doubt. The horizon was much closer than it had been.

Oren screamed. He kept screaming for a long time. At last it died away, and slowly he found himself buckled in the chair, sweat rolling down his face. The Examiner was holding him gently and smoothing his hair.

"Can you hear me, Oren? Is everything all right?" The voice was unplaced, inner.

Oren looked around the memoried elevator. "Is that you, Examiner? Are you still investigating?"

"Yes, Oren," came the voice of the little man who was nowhere. "But this time I'm sticking closer to you. No more recurrence of what happened before. Do you feel all right?"

"Perfectly."

"Very good. If there is any problem, just say so, or think it. I'm right with you. You understand you are in memory."

"Oh, yes, sir. But it's very real."

"Of course," came the other's voice. "As a matter of fact, it's every bit as real as what you experienced on your previous descent, although it is your memory. Memories are quite real things, you know. But with a proper guide, not so dangerous. I do digress, don't I? I'll be in touch."

Oren screamed. He kept screaming for a long time. At last it died away, and slowly he found himself buckled in the chair, sweat rolling down his face. The Examiner was holding him gently and smoothing his hair.

Back at the entry wall, the numbers above marked the 70,000th Level. No comment.

Down.

He noticed a man bent over a water fountain, and realized a parching thirst. And yet he knew he was asleep, really, and had been well nourished, but he knew he must act his thirst, for it had been real once. He wondered if he might not be poisoned by Golgaronok water, but decided to risk it. When the man departed, he crossed to the fountain and bent over it, only to find no ascertainable means of operation. No knobs, switches, buttons, dials or handles; he bent down, no footles either. Backing away in embarrassment, he watched carefully as a woman in mufti approached. She leaned over the fountain, water spurted, she drank and left. A little boy darted up, tiptoed at the fountain, and lapped up water as it gushed. He saw no mechanism. Pausing until the current of to-and-fro in this corridor ebbed, Oren hastily leaped to the fountain and bent over it. Nothing happened. With a curse, he hurried away before he became conspicuous.

He watched for Level 100,000, the address of the Recollecters. It was unlike any of the other decks. Long radial corridors stretched away in each direction, straight rows of metal floor and wall following the curve of the world to the vanishing point at the horizon. They were empty; far down one of them, a solitary figure moved. No one got off; no one got on.

He left the elevator briefly at Level 140,000. The time between stops on the super express was a good part of an hour, and he had needs he had not seen anyone else fulfilling. Level 140,000 seemed rural enough for his purpose.

Those who had left the elevator with him had soon strolled off on lanes through the fields of velvety-tasselled grain, leaving him alone by the base of the huge metal shaft housing the super express. Warmth and light bathed him, perhaps irradiated from the low ceiling. His eye was caught by a large square opening in the metal ceiling, and he wandered through the fields towards it. Beneath it he came to an identical square opening in the floor, railed about at waist level.

He looked up. The well rose through level after level until it closed to a pinpoint far above and vanished. Some of the levels-were darkened wedges in the shaft; night-time regions, he guessed. Three levels, only one hundred meters up, a face was leaning out from a small shrubbery-covered balcony and looking back down at him. It was hard to see details, but something in Oren's spine tightened, and something in his mind said, "Not human." The face waved something that might not have been a hand. Oren paused, waved back stiffly, and looked down the shaft.

The mirror of upwards, the shaft plunged forever into the depths. A few floors down, a sparkling trill of water rushed over the edge of the well and trembled down, down, down away from him, catching the varied hues from the floors it passed, an endless waterfall vanishing kilometers beneath him.

Oren returned to the elevator in time for the next arrival.

Time passed.

Oren screamed. He kept screaming for a long time. At last it died away, and slowly he found himself buckled in the chair, sweat rolling down his face. The Examiner was holding him gently and smoothing his hair.

"Are you there, sir?" asked Oren silently.

"Yes, Oren," came the reply.

"I think we're at the bottom," said Oren. "Level 180,000 and everyone's getting out, that is, all the last dozen or so left in here. They're all wandering over to the wall on the left, and I'm following them. I don't want to be the last person left, and go up again, or wind up with the elevator in storage somewhere. It can't be much farther to the center, anyway. I'm pretty weak from hunger, I guess, and tension, and my legs are wobbly, but I'm going on as long as I can. You want to know all this?"

"Perfect," said the Examiner from another universe, where Oren imagined him standing over his sleeping body. "Just what I want. Keep vocalizing, if you want."

"Well, we're standing beside the wall, as I say, about a dozen of us. The guy next to me is a beautiful ruddy color, stripped to the waist. He's got something slung over his shoulder that looks sort of like a fan fruit the size of a marsh pig. It's hard to keep my eyes off of him.

"Now the wall is rolling up, and my companions are trotting out jovially. Me, I take one look and gulp. Ahead of me, as far as I can see, below, above, stretch spindly girders off into the distance, like a gigantic spider web. And they're not straight; they curve downwards. As I watch, the figures of those who have just left the elevator ahead of me trot easily away, get smaller, their heads tilting farther and farther away from me as they depart around the curving beams. I step quickly out on the nearest girder, and shut my eyes as the wall clangs down behind me.

"It's just the close curvature in here, I keep thinking. We're near the center, it's curved like a small planetoid. And the weight's so near to nothing, I can hardly hurt myself. So with this consolation, I peek a bit. Ahead of me the girder curves forward and down like a chute to the abyss. I can imagine myself a few huridred meters ahead, beginning to slide down it, faster and faster until it drops me off into nothing. All the pedestrians ahead have vanished down their .girders.

"I raise my head slowly. Girders above girders in infinite arching series, criss-crossing until their forms are lost in the gloom, kilometers up. Each glow golden, except where black shadows cut across them. And that tells me that the light comes from below.

"I look down, a little more abruptly than I had planned. A golden glow mounts from below, caressing my eyes from far beneath more kilometers of girders. I look back; the huge square shaft that houses the elevator ends here. Within it, I suppose, the elevator is again lifting towards the far surface of Golgaronok, thousands of kilometers above. I catch my breath; I am alone at the center of a world.

"The gravity is very light. I can't explain my planet-hog sense of nausea, except that this whole place is so planet-like in its extent and contents, not like the emptiness of clear outer space. But here at the center of Golgaronok, I'm almost suspended between the opposing pulls from opposite hemispheres of the planet-ship. That gives me more confidence. I'm used to free-fall. I give a little hop, and time my drift down to my girder with my pulse. Next to nil. I won't get to the center very fast without a little extra push of my own.

I peer down again. About ten meters below, a lower bar cuts across the direction of mine, at about the right distance for a practice hop. I blink into the light, poise myself, flick off, away from my solid beam. For about ten seconds I drift downward, and come to rest on the lower bar. Easy as falling off a girder, I think, as my legs crumple under me and my nose bumps the metal nastily. I sit up and wipe it, comes blood. Then I start rubbing my legs to restore some circulation. I forgive them, though; I've been giving them a rough time.

"I wait till I feel up to it again, then I begin descending. It's an odd plunge; rather terrifying at first in its lonely strangeness, then slowly becoming calm and tranquil. It's like a dream, dropping gradually and silently down towards the golden center rising towards me, barely grazing a girder every few hundred meters to brake my fall and sight for the next trajectory. Profoundly easing, this methodical rhythm of plunge, brake, and push off. I forget my hunger, thirst, weariness, and what will happen next.

"There is no warning. One minute I am pushing gently off from a beam for the hundredth time, the next all the beams have swept up past me, and I'm dropping into a vast open emptiness. I look around desparately for my next foothold. There is none. Above me, or maybe behind me, the network of spidery bars retreats into distance, and I drop into the golden glow. I see my diminishing shadow black on the retreating girders.

"Damn me for a fool! I swing to face inward. And now I can see where I am going. I am at the center.

"Far ahead of me, like an orange sun, a gleaming spherical structure lies before me. It lies, a sparkling nucleus to the world-ship, almost—but not quite—in my path. Unless it's got more mass than I think, I'm going to miss it.

"It seems to move up towards me, though I know that it is I that am falling. It looms and shows itself as unmarked golden surface; then closer, several small openings are visible. It must be several hundred meters across. No, ten times that... I see a man on it.

"A small speck is moving here and there over its looming surface. It is certainly a man; he looks up and notices me. For a long moment he gazes up at me drifting helplessly through his zenith. He waves a hand briskly and turns back to his work.

"I try to croak out for help, but I have no throat. I watch while the fellow obviously keeps to whatever he is doing (and what in Cosmos does he think I'm doing up here?), and the golden ball begins to drop away from me. My senses are spinning, and as I try to recapture them, they fade...."

"Oren," came the voice of the Examiner, "let's pass over to the other side of your period of coma now."

"Holy nova!" retorted Oren, spinning deadly in nothingness, lying asleep in an unknown room, "I forgot again that I'm only remembering!"

"A one-hundred-percent full-sensory induced recollection, indistinguishable from the real thing," said the Examiner, perhaps a tint of pride in his voice. "You're controlling yourself quite well. Now, when you became conscious again . . . ?"

"I don't know how much later it is. I seem to come to when something gently nudges me, and open my eyes. There is a horrid noise near my ear. My eyes focus a bit, and I seem to be eddying among metallically curved beams. A bird crossed where I am looking, a green and blue and squawking bird. And then the beams seem to fall away from me, I am rising upward into a golden light, and then. . . ."

Oren paused a long time, and then resumed. "This is how it is. Something touched my face softly. Someone looking at me. Someone saying, 'Excuse me for disturbing you, sir, but you are dying. Is it by your own intent, or do you desire assistance?'

"Somehow it seems a rational question. I manage to gasp out 'Assistance.' A moment later something warm and fragrant is poured down my throat. I gulp eagerly, and it is removed, again offered. In a minute I can relax, and open my eyes.

"I am lying on that golden surface. A man kneels beside me, an odd little man, sympathetic, shrewd, harmless.

" 'I'm sorry I let you pass the first time,' he says. 'As you said nothing, I mistakenly assumed you were swimming for pleasure.' He offers the liquid again. 'Are you quite better? You should have accepted some person's aid long before. You are not in your best condition, I fear.'

"I say nothing, but raise myself on my elbow. Around us lies the surface of the golden globe.

" 'The Center,' I have said aloud, for the little man nods.

" 'Just so. Appreciate it as you will, sir. Few come so deep.'

"I look down at my left hand and grin weakly to myself. Clutched in my hand after its incredible trek is the transfer cube.

"The man detaches a weapon-shaped article from a clip at his waist. I flinch. 'Please rest now,' he says politely. 'I have work to complete, of course. Then I shall see you to your destination.' He almost curtseys, says, 'Sustenance is there beside you,' and begins walking off around the curve of the globe in awkward strides that suggest magnetic boots. It is quite weightless here. As I recover strength I watch him at his task, and take sips from the warm flask of liquid. His tool is the gun-like object; he uses it to spray seemingly endless amounts of gold paint on surfaces which hardly need any more. Slowly he works his way over the far curve of the golden sphere, until his head bobs beneath the horizon. As soon as he has vanished, I grasp the nearest of the functional or ornamental excrescences which surround me, and begin to pull myself in the other direction.

"After a few hundred meters, the rim of a portal shows ahead of me. I reach it and push my head over, to see only blackness. Hoisting myself over the rim, I bend my head down out of the golden glare until my eyes adjust. Bit by bit the outlines of a small room can be made out; I am looking in through wall, ceiling, floor, as you will. Shadowy furniture on five sides, table, chair, viewscreen—universals. An oval opening in the far side. I shove myself across to the opening and again peer through.

"My breath catches; it is a magnificent effect. The whole sphere of space surrounds me in unwinking constellations. It is so real I stop breathing in fear of vacuum; but it is illusion. I recognize at once that the portrayal is of the actual outside view; Randar 13 swims, a cold hemisphere to my left; our sun flames weakly far below in endless depths; the patterns of the Zodiac of my youth march about me in aching distance: the Harpist, the Flatbird, the Cross, the Triple Tower, the Dreamer. I cling to the oval ring of the dimly lit opening and stare out into the starlit black. Somewhere out there is the exact center, and the seal-safe I have sought so long.

"My fingers have been feeling within the opening as I survey the interior, and now my right hand passes across a metal bar. I kneel and finger it. It is solidly fixed, and stretches out into the night; as nearly as I can judge, toward the exact center. I take a good grip on it, and prepare to push off from the opening.

" I'm afraid,' says a mild voice, 'I must ask you to refrain . ..'

"I don't pause to consider whether the little man's tool can spray anything besides paint; instead of shoving off with my feet, I reverse vectors, lashing back with my feet from my handhold on the bar. The little man spins with a gasp as my boots connect with his arm and he is flung heavily against a wall. By the time he ricochets I am on him. He doesn't struggle, just lies looking up at me, gasping for breath. I don't want to harm him, but nothing is going to keep me from finishing up now I'm this close. I heave him up—he doesn't weigh anything here—and pull him to the outer portal. I position myself in the firmest stance I can attain, grasp him by armpit and thigh, and heave him straight up with all the force I can dredge up. I fall back into the room as the little man gradually rises from me, his wistful face receding as he drifts outward from the golden globe.

"That should keep him off my back for a while.

"I bend to the bar again, panting for breath myself, and begin to haul myself out into the look of infinity. One tug after another along the bar, until I am skimming among the constellations. Pull, and pull, and pull, and....

"DAMNIT!

"I have found my goal by ramming into it head first. It hurts! I still haven't learned to allow for being out of my checker-suit.

"As my head spins, my stomach retches, and I prepare to die by preference, my hands are automatically aligning the transfer cube with the sealsafe cube, and transfer starts. An endless time, while the cold stars stare lidlessly in on me, and then suddenly it is done.

"It is done.

"Transfer is complete, the world-ship's sealsafe is fused, my friends out on Randar are alive and waiting, and not planning to take any chances with Golgaronok; and my mission is a complete success.

"I know all this the instant the stars go out.

"I cling there in the utter dark at the center of a world I have just turned off, and every cell in my body slumps in relief and exhaustion. It's out of my hands. The burden's off me, I've done my job, I can rest.

"I guess I'm lucky to pick the same bar to leave by that I came in on, or maybe I don't. But I'm not caring much any more. Anyway, I clamber out into the same, or a similar, outer room, and then onto the surface of the Center. The golden surface still shines in silent phosphorescence.

"I look up for the little man. He's not up there. I wander around and find him sitting a short distance away, nursing his arm tenderly. It looks like I bent it the wrong way a bit; I hadn't meant to.

"It's hard to keep from caving in, with my limbs, my head, my senses, all about to collapse, but I do what I can to look mighty and determined. 'I hoped you'd stay up there longer,' I tell him. 'I don't want to have to smash you again.'

" 'No need for that,' he replies with odd cheerfulness. 'I'm not really fond of being smashed. I came down, of course, with this.' He holds up the paint squirter. 'Without a reaction tool it's very hard to get anywhere in the Center, don't you think? For instance,' and he draws back his good arm and, with a heave that lays him on his back, hurls the tool off into limbo. 'For instance, how were you planning to go back . .. up?'

"My eyes follow the tumbling little object until it vanishes in the golden perspectives of infinity. My mind follows it up. Up to the girders invisible kilometers above. Up in the beginnings of gravity, from girder to girder. Up to the elevator—which the seal-safe has now put out of operation. Up deck by deck 180,000 times, straight up out of this pit, to my checker-ship, impregnably waiting, vanishingly far above me. As my thoughts rise, my spirit and knees crumble. I don't fall, of course; just find myself floating above the surface like a corpse.

"His pleasant little face swims into my vision. 'Perhaps, sir,' he is saying as I slowly disintegrate, 'I can still help you.' Now I see two of him; how could I have taken both of him on? He smiles, and my eyes blur. There are four little men, dozens, then he explodes into sparkling shards and

VIII.

"I am being moved, lifted, arranged like a rag puppet. I am tired, tired and drained. Someone is saying brightly, 'That will do, I think. Now where to start? You must understand that it will be better to answer my questions as accurately as possible—that is surely true. We can also assume, from all indications thus far, that I am your superior. That should be sufficient to begin with. Now let us start at the beginning. Open your eyes.'

"I do, and immediately try to stand at attention before the desk, not easy in null-grav. All I know about this man sitting across from me is that he is my superior" WAIT A BLAME MOMENT "and that it is better to answer his questions as accurately" I'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE TOO "as possible. I only hope I don't fall asleep. The other looks up, a small unstriking man." BUT I KNOW HIM. THOSE EYES, THIS ROOM " 'The very first thing,' says the little man" IN THE TONGUE OF GOLGARONOK " 'is for me to congratulate you most sincerely. The journey you have just made...'" HE'S THE ENEMY. DON'T TELL HIM... FORGET IT. IT'S TOO LATE. THIS IS MEMORY. I'VE ALREADY TOLD HIM.

" 'few others could have mustered.' The smile wavers across his face again, the waver spreads to his whole face, to the room. My sight blurs liquidly for an instant, and then solidifies again. I have caught up with now ... I think."

IX.

Cotter Oren dragged his babbling thoughts to a ragged halt, and sat numbly in a functionally universal chair in an all-too-familiar room. The Examiner was standing over him, offering a flask of refreshment. He was more pale and worn. Oren looked down at himself; he had filled out, was more rested than since he had entered Golgaronok.

"Yes," said the little man. "You're out of memory now. This," he waved his hand, "is current occurrence. Space-time date present, if you will."

Oren glared for some time in tight-lipped silence. Finally he spoke stiffly.

"You are a native of Golgaronok; you're the little man I met at the Center." He looked around him. "Where we still are. I never got out after all."

The other shrugged apologetically. "You're still in the Ship," he said. "I never said you weren't. You know, I never lied at all."

"Well, there was a hell of a damned lot of truth you just never got around to mentioning," Oren snapped. He rose, and strode over to the Examiner. "Can you give me," he growled down at the man, "any good reason why I shouldn't break your neck?"

Somewhat regretfully, the other shook his head. "None you'd listen to—unless you thought of it on your own." He cheered up a bit. "But I really don't think you're going to," he added, "because you asked."

"Forget it," said Oren. He moved back to the table, and slumped against it. "Damn," he said thoughtfully. There was a long silence.

"May I ask," said the Examiner, "why my neck remains unbroken?"

Oren looked glum. "I don't see much use in it, other than cheering me up a bit. I don't suppose you'd give me the chance if you couldn't stop me. And you must have already let the other Anarchs know what you found out."

"Ah, prudence," said the other. "A fine virtue. But I haven't told anyone yet, quite impossible. And I assure you I couldn't stop you," he added with incongruous glee. "So now are you going to kill me?"

Oren paused. "Thanks for the suggestion, but not right now. I've got a lot to learn from you first."

"Curiosity. Even better. But I will not tell you a thing under threat. You might as well dispose of me now .. . unless you have some other reason not to."

Oren grimaced. "Will you shut up! I'm not going to kill you anyway. I don't just go around killing people. I think that was the nastiest trick I ever got played, but—oh, just shut up. You played very well for your side; I thought you were on mine, is all. I might even like you a bit, under other circumstances."

"Affection!" the Examiner glowed. "Your reasons get better all the time. All right," he ended hastily as Oren glowered at him, "now I will shut up."

There was another lengthy pause, while Oren's thoughts clambered into tentative structures, and tumbled to separate items again.

Then the other said almost shyly, "Now I will tell you anything you wish, as it is evident you will not threaten me if I do not. What do you wish to know?"

Oren stared at him. At last he came up, inanely, with "Who are you?"

"Very good." The little man settled down to his favorite occupation of running verbiage. "I have no aural mnemonic of the sort you use, as our language is based on mental, rather than aural correlates. We evolve a separate self-denoting concept for each separate person we deal with, or sometimes for each meeting, which is mutually employed for that occasion. I have been thinking of myself for some time now, as far as my relationship with you is concerned, as Basho."

"Basho???"

"Precisely. It is, perhaps, a small joke. Your Home Galaxy the still pond, the Ship the intruding amphibian, and we are both caught up in the Ker-plop. Anyway, for you I am Basho."

"Oh ... I meant, I also meant, who are you? Grand Inquisitor for the Recollecters?"

"Not at all," said Basho hastily. "You do me too much honor. No, I am a ... a relative nobody. It is by mere chance you found me, or anyone, down here at the Center. I'm a wear-and-tear man, and was looking for something useful and different and preferably meditative to do, and the Computer records mentioned that it was several decades since the Ship Center was refurbished. So I just came down to touch it up. So when you first dropped in on me, at first I thought you weren't anyone special either, except in as far as everyone is, of course. But when I followed you in, and the interior had changed..." his eyes shone with delight. "Were those lights . . . stars?"

"Images of them, I guess. That's just what they look like . . . outside."

"Magnificent! Anyway, I feared you'd get hurt, and you kicked me! That, I presume, was violence. Stars and violence in one day; it was most impressive! Naturally I became intensely curious, so I questioned you. I seem to have found some unusual answers. The Ship has indeed, in a sense, stopped; and those left behind in the Home Galaxy did manage to survive, after a fashion. And to think that I, a mere wear-and-tear man, should be the very first—pardon me, I mean from the Ship—to know of this. What an experience! Thank you."

"You're welcome," replied Oren automatically. "So you are just a chance nobody, a peasant bystander, who trapped a checker-pilot, hypnotized him, and wrung him dry. Just what can you think of me, I hate to imagine."

"That you are an exciting and very brave ... er... barbarian," answered Basho frankly. "I did try to protect your integrity and confidence as best I could. For a truly courageous and capable man, you are terribly diffident and insecure, Oren. If I failed, it is just because I have never been very good at this sort of thing."

"Just go on."

"So I observed from your relation what I could of your worlds out there, and your reactions to us in the Ship. You must understand that this is a very big event. The Ship has been travelling for over two hundred generations to reach this point in space and time. And now it's here, and there you all are out there, and there will be all that data to analyse, and decisions to make, and... well, it's quite an affair."

"It will hardly be amusing," commented Oren, "if the next stage of the affair is for Randar to shoot your Ship down."

Smile. "I doubt if your great 6000-meter ships are equipped for shooting down even minor planets."

"We could—pardon me, they could puncture a pretty big hole in your hull, and leak your air."

"Do get the scale straight, Oren. This is a world full of air, in a .21 g. gravity-field. It wouldn't explosively decompress. It would take forever. And nothing you could—pardon me, Oren, they could do—would get beneath the Barrier. Except, of course, doubletalk."

Oren groaned.

"But I've sealed your sealsafe," he pointed out, "damped your ship's energy out. At least they did from out there, as soon as I'd primed the fuse. The Ship is crippled."

Basho tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I gather that would be devastating in your worlds," he said. "Or in the times of the Anarchs, for that matter. Oren, we do things differently now. The Ship will hardly notice, except for a couple of items kept over from the Anarchs, like the Elevators. We don't much employ your kinds of energy sources; primitive, you'd call us, perhaps. Most of our lighting is phosphorescent. Our atmosphere and subsistence is cyclical and self-sustaining, just as on your worlds. The engines, and the in-flight protective screens, will be out, but then we've stopped; they're not needed any more. A few Anarch relics, like your star-show in the Center . .. no, I can't say that's much of a problem.

"There will, of course, be some casualties," Basho added quietly. "People trapped in elevators, for example. But I should expect the fatalities to be well under a tenth of a percent of our population."

Oren winced. "Your computers?" he asked.

"Oh, they're not affected. They're not human. Oh, I see you've misunderstood. They're not mechanical either. They're life-forms. We symbed with them in the Cloud. Highly logical in their way, but certainly don't need to be plugged in. No," Basho continued, "the difficulties I anticipate do not involve any danger to the Ship... or Galgaronok, as you uglify it. I might rather fear for all planet-dwelling mankind in the Galaxy. Unless they also possess virtues of prudence, curiosity, and affection."

It was Oren's turn to smile. "That's a little extravagant. You have a mighty impressive ship, or world, and you've worried Randar, but don't let it go to your head."

"You mean . . . ?"

"That there is half a galaxy full of a lot of humans who'd prove a bit much for even you to threaten."

Basho nodded. He looked out the portal, up into the golden haze and distance. "What's the area of man's living space in the galaxy?"

"Are you still trying to examine me?"

"We're trading information. If you choose to trust me."

Oren nodded. "The re-expansion since the 'Tween-Times has reached over 20,000 light-years across—and must have expanded since the last border reports were current."

"Fine, but I meant effective living space. All those impressive light years are just empty wasted space. Man doesn't use them. They don't add to his power, rather they scatter and dilute it. Man actually lives . . . where?"

"On the surface of planets," said Oren.

"On the outer rind of inhabitable worlds?"

"Of course."

"How many planets, roughly?"

"Incorporated—call it 64,000. I've heard that quoted."

"Average size," pressed Basho.

"Tends to be smaller planets, standard gravity. Say 8 to 15 thousand kilometer diameter."

"Say 12,000," said Basho. "Area of a spherical surface?"

"4 pi r square."

"So?"

Oren groaned. "Surface of a planet 6000 kiloms radius is 88/7 times 36 million is... about 450 million square kiloms. Times 64,000 planets is roughly... 3 times 10 to the 13th square kilometers."

"All inhabitable?"

"Well, no. Lots of it ocean, polar caps, deserts, just not used."

Basho said, "Let the figure you quoted stand. Now population."

Oren calculated. "I've heard of planets like Dreyk with 15 billions; but most inhabited planets are under a billion. Taking two or three billion as an average ..."

"Take three billion."

"Then 3 times 10 to the 9th, times 64,000 planets equals a total human population for the galaxy of about 1.9 times 10 to the 14th: 190,000,000,000,000."

"Living on the order of light years away from one another, as well," observed Basho. "And set against these vast forces of planetary humanity is one small world. What is the formula for the volume of a sphere?"

"4/3 pi r cube," said Oren, and straightened abruptly. "Wait, is that your point? The Ship is populated in three dimensions. With 6000 kiloms radius, its volume is 88/21 times 216 times 10 to the 9th cubic kiloms .. . just under 10 to the 12th. And then ... yes, the Ship is constructed in shells with about 35 meters vertical space between, making about 30 to the kilometer. Which come out to a total living space in the Ship of... about 3 times 10 to the 13th ..." He stopped in confusion. "I made a mistake somewhere. That's the figure for the planets."

"You made no mistake. Finish the task. Possible population of the Ship?"

"At the same population density, the same population... 1.9 times 10 to the 14th ..." Oren was in near panic, but switched to laughter. "Oh, no. That's utter nonsense. I don't know how you did it, but for a minute you had me worried."

"What's the difficulty?"

"I'm not sure, but you can't tell me there are a hundred-ninety trillion people crammed into this spaceship."

"Not crammed," said Basho. "Living quite comfortably. Remember, we left room for oceans, ice caps, deserts, and free space. It is true. Didn't you yourself drop past sphere after sphere, all inhabited, each one a surface functionally equivalent to a planet? In fact, you dropped through 180,000 spheres on your way to the center, each a slightly smaller planet." He paused, then added, "When 'Golgaronok' arrived, the human population and living space in the Galaxy doubled."

Oren sat down. What else was there to do?

"Look, Oren," said Basho at last, "You said that ships from only a few thousand light years off break down, the equipment begins to erode, the atmosphere to foul, the language to change, the crew to mutate. Now you enter a ship which, after hundreds of millenia, has clean air, functioning apparatus, impeccable Anarchical language, genetically stable inhabitants. Isn't it clear at once that this ship has never broken down, never severed its link with the day of departure? It went to the Magellanics, did what it went for, and has now returned. We have retained the skills of the Anarchate, and kept harmony among trillions for all these ages. We are more viable than a planet, a system, or all your systems. We do not have to justify our existence. You perhaps must justify yours."

Oren was silent. The little man went on, almost pleadingly.

"Oren, we have been progressing without a break for three hundred thousand years while your immediate ancestors were plunging into the abyss of whatever horror you call the 'Tween-Times, from which you're just now clambering out. A small sprinkling of isolated humanity, on thousands of segregated worlds, barely recovered from millenia of degeneration and ignorance, without clear knowledge of your great past which we still hold for you—completely unaware that the true and vital history of humanity has been evolving elsewhere—here, in the Ship." He looked at Oren. "The Ship has come to take you home again."

There was a long silence. Finally Oren looked at Basho. "You said only a tenth of a percent of your people would die through the power loss," he said accusingly. "That's nineteen billion people!"

"That is the order of magnitude," admitted Basho.

Oren kneaded his forehead. "Then I've got to get out fast," he said. "I can't reverse the sealsafe from in here. I've got to get them to release it from Randar."

"Do you think," asked Basho, "they are likely to listen to you on the matter?"

Oren looked grim. "Get me to my checker-suit," he said, "and see if they can stop me. I don't have to take over the whole system to get that power restored, just one planet at worst."

Basho sighed deeply. "I was hoping you'd feel that way," he smiled suddenly, "but I couldn't prompt you."

"Can I get out quickly?"

"It will be an interesting challenge. I think, together, we can. There are various alternatives. We should start at once, if you are ready."

"I'm ready," said Oren.

"It will take a great deal of care and patience," said Basho gently, "to prevent lasting damage to your people's feelings of confidence and adequacy. Your cultures are built on deep illusions of superiority which the Ship will destroy. We will have to be sure to replace better foundations rapidly. It is a fine challenge."

The little man stared far up into the golden distances, his voice a musing murmur of sound. "I cannot, of course, anticipate the decision of the Ship, but I shouldn't be surprised if we take Randar in. After all, as humans, you deserve what we can give. An additional shell or two thrown up over the outermost level, perhaps, would easily include in the Randarian population. Then I imagine we might possibly visit the other inhabited human systems. That would give an external course of action in place of the Return which has now ended, and shouldn't take much longer than that has. We will eventually be able to bring them all in, and reintegrate them into the mainstream of humanity."

"My friend Basho, you are rather arrogant," remarked Oren.

"We are," agreed the other, "quite arrogant. Shall we go?"